Opening Pandora's Box

I've always been the type of person who can focus while listening to music. I actually need music to focus (aka drown out my bosses voice yelling my name 500 times a day). My website of choice these days has been Pandora. It's basically an automated internet radio station where once you have entered a song or artist, it will play other songs that you may like. You can also create your own radio stations which makes it easy to click when you go back to the website day after day (obviously the case here). The tricky situation is that although I like listening to music at work, my cubicle mates (and boss) probably don't. I have to turn the sound on to the perfect level where I can hear the music well but where it's low enough not to be heard by anyone else. Although headsets are allowed, earphones here are out of the question so that option is out.

When a song is playing you can either give it a thumbs up, thumbs down, or nothing, Thumbs up meaning you want to hear the song again and more like it. The downfall is that if you give the thumbs down to too many songs one after the other it won't change the song. I think that's a bit OOC (out of control)..Actually, that's too IN control. Why is there always a catch with these programs?

I am a big fan of Meiko, Missy Higgins and Ingrid Michaelson these days while Polly is a big rap fan. She is a petite adorable girl but she can rap like I've never seen. She knows every word to EVERY rap song. Too bad I sit across the office from her. Sometimes she gets so into her music she'll im me and tell me she caught herself rapping out loud and got weird looks from our co-workers who sit next to her.

As I'm writing this post, my co-workers' speaker just yelled out "kidnapping a baby" and her face turned red as she said "sorry!" Clearly she hasn't mastered the volume controls yet. Good to know she is listening to the news though while I shop online and listen to music. Definitely a bit more productive in her "not working" than mine.

Check out Pandora at http://www.pandora.com/

It’s not 5 yet, get back to work!